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So the trip to Atlanta was very intense. One of the days there felt like it was years long, then the next day hardly felt like a full day at all.
There's always this pressure to try and describe a trip succinctly: "Oh it was great, very relaxing" or "It was terrible, I had no time to do anything" or whatever. But this trip, maybe more so than others defies my attempts at summing it up. It was totally mixed.
So first, the work part of the trip. I went with the cast of Katie Tomatie (Michael Sommers, Sue, Nancy, and Kyle) to perform Katie at the TCG Conference. TCG stands for Theatre Communications Group. I don't know much about the organization, and less about the conference except that it was called "Building the Future Audience". I still don't know because I only went to one talk. It was delivered by Anne Bogart (a celebrity only to people in the theatre industry-- not that I had ever heard of her before...) and she had some extremely insightful and inspiring things to say. As far as performing the show, we had only three performances, but all of them were very bizarre, each in their own way. I think the main problems were that Michael was freaked out by the whole thing, and the audience and venue was not what the show was created for. Anyway, with either tiny audiences or sizzling heat, the performances were brutal.
Now the play part of the trip. We rented a car and tooled around Atlanta. We ate amazing food at a variety of awesome restaurants: Nickiemoto's, Willy's, Naza, and Justin's Restaurant (owned by P Diddy). Nancy and I splurged on new dresses at Ann Taylor, we went to Starbucks twice a day and drank lattes like mad, and we talked into the wee hours of the morning about life, God, metaphysics, our soulless culture. Nancy, Kyle and I visited the historic Atlanta Underground to find that it was just an underground mall full of ghettolicious shops with the cheapest, crappiest, glitziest stuff ever. It was awesome. And you name it, they could personalize it. Hats, shirts, keychains, bracelets, everything. We could also get a photo taken with 6 parrots for 15 dollars. But we didn't.
We each had our own hotel rooms, so I could have slept on alternate beds every night. We had a kicking view and TV. I watched little bits of like 20 movies, especially at night since I couldn't sleep after all the espresso I had unthinkingly drunk throughout the day.
Anyway, I guess I can say it was a good trip. But it's also good to be home. I missed Jonner and the animals. Time to get back to work. My first task was catching up on sleep. The second is laundry.
There's always this pressure to try and describe a trip succinctly: "Oh it was great, very relaxing" or "It was terrible, I had no time to do anything" or whatever. But this trip, maybe more so than others defies my attempts at summing it up. It was totally mixed.
So first, the work part of the trip. I went with the cast of Katie Tomatie (Michael Sommers, Sue, Nancy, and Kyle) to perform Katie at the TCG Conference. TCG stands for Theatre Communications Group. I don't know much about the organization, and less about the conference except that it was called "Building the Future Audience". I still don't know because I only went to one talk. It was delivered by Anne Bogart (a celebrity only to people in the theatre industry-- not that I had ever heard of her before...) and she had some extremely insightful and inspiring things to say. As far as performing the show, we had only three performances, but all of them were very bizarre, each in their own way. I think the main problems were that Michael was freaked out by the whole thing, and the audience and venue was not what the show was created for. Anyway, with either tiny audiences or sizzling heat, the performances were brutal.
Now the play part of the trip. We rented a car and tooled around Atlanta. We ate amazing food at a variety of awesome restaurants: Nickiemoto's, Willy's, Naza, and Justin's Restaurant (owned by P Diddy). Nancy and I splurged on new dresses at Ann Taylor, we went to Starbucks twice a day and drank lattes like mad, and we talked into the wee hours of the morning about life, God, metaphysics, our soulless culture. Nancy, Kyle and I visited the historic Atlanta Underground to find that it was just an underground mall full of ghettolicious shops with the cheapest, crappiest, glitziest stuff ever. It was awesome. And you name it, they could personalize it. Hats, shirts, keychains, bracelets, everything. We could also get a photo taken with 6 parrots for 15 dollars. But we didn't.
We each had our own hotel rooms, so I could have slept on alternate beds every night. We had a kicking view and TV. I watched little bits of like 20 movies, especially at night since I couldn't sleep after all the espresso I had unthinkingly drunk throughout the day.
Anyway, I guess I can say it was a good trip. But it's also good to be home. I missed Jonner and the animals. Time to get back to work. My first task was catching up on sleep. The second is laundry.
posted by Joanne at 1:37 PM
5 Comments:
Anne Bogart is my hero. I'm serious. I met her sort of last summer in New York. She's amazing.
I could see how she could be my hero too. She talked about amazing stuff. I agreed so wholeheartedly with everything she was saying.
She wrote a brilliant (and short!) book called A DIRECTOR PREPARES which you don't need to be a director to appreciate. I think it's great for all artists. Read it!
I'm adding it to my list. You know, I figured that you'd know who I was talking about. Yay for theatre folks!
No fair, Jason - she's MY hero. Okay, she's great enough to share. And A DIRECTOR PREPARES is awesome, incredibly inspiring.
And Joanne, you DO know Anne Bogart, at least through the grueling work of Viewpointing, which she created.
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